About Sandwich Dad – Sandwich Dad

Sandwich Dad is Jon Ostrander. A geriatric millennial Canadian father of 3, with an insatiable love for sandwiches, and a voice from the golden age of radio. “Sandwich Dad” began as a blog in 2019 when Jon endeavored to document and explore his connection with sandwiches, their histories, their variations, and to share cheap and easy ways to make them at home with budget and time at front of mind. An eventual shift to “How To” videos on Instagram and TikTok started a brave new sandwich revolution in social media!…. Or at least gained a respectably large amount of followers, to the point where Ol’ Dad made a lot of new sandwich friends and became a founding member of #sandwichtok.

These days Jon is still busy exploring exciting new and classic sandwiches from around the world while spreading the gospel of “making sandwiches with your whole heart so you’ll only need to use half of your ass”. He is also documenting little known regional sandwiches in his “Sandwiches of Canada” series, checking out fun new condiments on “Condiment Corner”, and showing off all the best sandwich spots around the country, especially in his hometown of Saskatoon SK.

The Origin of Sandwich Dad:

Once upon a time, I was living in Canada’s largest city, and it was my birthday. I had no family around and all of my friends were at work for the day so I decided to go and buy a gigantic lumberjack sandwich from Safeway for lunch as a present to myself.

After I quick internet search I discovered to my horror that there are no Safeways in Toronto! And this was before every grocery store started making full loaf sandwiches out of their stale French loaves (which can’t be a coincidence).

So, industrious young man as I was then, I rolled up my sleeves and headed for the closest No Frills, determined ot build my own goddamn giant sandwich. I shared it with my friends later that evening and declared that every birthday hence, I would have a giant sandwich rather than a cake. “Most people prefer sandwiches to cake anyway!” I ignorantly proclaimed.

Since that day, people I know began associating me with sandwiches, and that felt pretty good.

Many years went by and I had a bunch of children.

A friend on twitter asked for suggestions for taking a lunch to work, and I, without comment, sent him a video on how to make a bologna sandwich. his reply: “Sandwich dad logging on”.

So here I am. A fairly busy dad who needed a new hobby, and if I’m honest, something to replace the bits of personality I had shed since taking on the dad lifestyle.

I also often work with history, research, and various types of media so I decided to work those thing into it all as well.

So there you have it. The mildly innocuous origin story of Sandwich Dad.

Here are a bunch of my past birthday sandwiches: